Psychological horror PS1 horror Short horror

Lake Haven - Chrysalis

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A routine welfare check in Kansas, and a case that never lets the detective go.

Platforms: PC
Price: Paid
Rated: Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam (97% of 509 reviews)
Length: about 1 to 1.5 hours (players' reports)
Players: 1
Controls: Keyboard or controller (full controller support); tank controls
Made by: Encrypt Games
Released: 2023

What frightens Sent to check on a woman nobody has heard from in 13 days, a detective searches her dark house and grounds behind fixed cameras and finds signs of something gruesome; the case opens onto a surreal world of rotting flesh, strange voices and dread that the game leaves unexplained.
Content: violence and death, mental illness, suicide.

Lake Haven - Chrysalis is a short PS1-style horror game and the prologue to a planned game called Lake Haven. On October 7th, Detective Zeke Reynold is sent to look for Eleanor Robertson, who has not answered the phone in 13 days, and what he finds draws him into a surreal and gruesome mystery.

About Lake Haven - Chrysalis

Lake Haven - Chrysalis is a prologue chapter by Encrypt Games, released on Steam for Windows in January 2023. It opens with a phone call to the Kansas police: an old woman, Marianne Lambert, is worried because her younger friend Eleanor Robertson has not picked up the phone in 13 days. Detective Zeke Reynold expects a case he will soon forget.

You play in the third person behind fixed camera angles with tank controls, in the low-poly look of PlayStation horror games. You search the house and its grounds, read notes, pick up and combine items, find keys and clues, and piece together Eleanor's story. There is a pistol and some combat, but most of the time goes into exploring and working out where to go next.

The horror is in the atmosphere. The dark rooms, the sound and the slow turn from a plain police call to something dreamlike and gruesome do the work, along with surreal scenes the store page describes as gruesome yet beautiful. The Steam page warns of violence and death and of themes of mental illness and suicide.

Players on Steam compare it to early Silent Hill, Twin Peaks and The X-Files, and many call it a taste of a larger game. It is short, around an hour or so by their accounts, and cheap. Some reviewers found the backtracking and the fixed cameras fiddly when looking for items. The full game, Lake Haven, has not been released yet.

How to play Lake Haven - Chrysalis

Buy and install Lake Haven - Chrysalis from Steam on Windows; a controller is fully supported.
Learn the tank controls: up moves Zeke forward in the way he faces, left and right turn him.
Search the house and grounds, read every note and pick up items; some must be combined in the inventory.
Use keys and clues to open new rooms, and follow Eleanor's story to the end of the chapter.

Screenshots

Lake Haven - Chrysalis screenshot: Zeke, wearing his badge, sits at a table with a glass of red wine and a sheet of paper in a misty checkered room

Lake Haven - Chrysalis screenshot: the low-poly detective looks out of a car window at a wheat field

Lake Haven - Chrysalis screenshot: a green wireframe face of a woman in an arched frame, with the caption She was alone, a prisoner of her rotting hollow of flesh and bones

Lake Haven - Chrysalis screenshot: Zeke with a flashlight in a dark room with an old television, seen from a fixed camera

Tips

Check rooms from every camera angle; players report items that are hard to see from one view.
Save when you get the chance, since players report a long stretch before the first save.
Read the notes carefully: the clues for codes and items are in them.
Play with headphones; the sound carries much of the unease.